Do Sunderland players have the fight to beat the drop? Chris Coleman on the dressing room

Chris Coleman admits that Sunderland’s dressing room is a quiet place after defeat but does not think it necessarily reflects a lack of fight.

The Sunderland boss was left infuriated by his team’s defending in Saturday’s 2-0 Sky Bet Championship defeat at home to Preston North End.

And he was in no mood to protect them from their defensive shortcomings.

They Wearsiders again conceded from a set-piece, as Paul Gallagher’s 50th-minute free-kick headed in at the back post by unmarked Deepdale striker Sean Maguire to make the crucial breakthrough at the Stadium of Light.

Coleman knows that his bottom-placed team lack resilience, but he does not think that a quiet dressing room is the root cause of that.

He said: “If it had been a 10-pass move and they’d cut through us with brilliant individual skill, that would be one thing, but it wasn’t that, it was one free-kick into the box and it wasn’t difficult to defend, but we didn’t defend it.

“That’s what cost us the game.

“Once we went a goal down, we weren’t getting back into it.

“It was just more disappointment and it’s a common theme here.

“We don’t come back when we go a goal down.

“Most dressing rooms I’ve been involved with now are very different to the ones of yesteryear.

“You don’t really get a lot of that [arguing].

“You get one or two who are vocal, but, predominantly in every club, they say less in dressing rooms.